Woodson Library Rose Garden

The vintage rose garden that stretches around the Carter G. Woodson branch of the Gary Public Library was started by the Miller Garden Club in the hot summer of 2016 and has a collection of 115 old garden roses. The roses are of different hybrids that were discovered, bred, and offered for sale before 1950, and more than half of them are of French origin. The collection of roses valued at $3,000 to $6,000 were donated by Razvan Bancos from his former home in Evanston, Illinois.
Razvan has made a connection between this rose garden and Simone de Beauvoir’s love of roses. She was a French thinker who visited Miller Beach while Nelson Algren was still living here. All the roses in the garden are hybrids and species found in existence before World War II. Razvan’s intent was to make it a Time Capsule, a place to read and freely exchange ideas of humanism, feminism, education, social justice, and empowerment; to walk and admire the roses of times long past and tell their story.
Rose bushes are planted in a single line in parallel to the library walls. Many classic hybrids are to be found here. Our rose garden has more old garden rose cultivars in its collection than any garden in the state of Indiana, more than the Chicago Botanical Garden or any state In the Midwest. It is one of the few in the country and the world that shows exclusively old garden roses. Albas, gallicas, mosses, hybrid chinas, bourbons, hybrid perpetuals, pernetianas, damasks, portlands, species roses, and rugosas are the bulk of the collection.
Detailed information on the roses in the collection can be found in the spreadsheet below.